SPEAKER_05: That was your colonoscopy. Oh, well, that was a talk about
SPEAKER_04: your anus. Talk about my anus. Have you guys had yours recently? Who's had a colonoscopy? I have mine in
SPEAKER_03: December. My first one. Yeah, my first one. Yeah, I was
SPEAKER_04: delinquent on mine too. They used to be 50. And they moved
SPEAKER_03: the age down to 45. Yeah, they didn't move the age down.
SPEAKER_04: free break. Have you had one yet? That's a yes. We got a yes. Saks, have you had yours? I'm do. By the way, I got reported because I actually Saks you did have one. And they found a bunch of DeSantis merchandise. DeSantis had a DeSantis pin, tons of DeSantis stuff right up your ass. At our
SPEAKER_04: age, we should be four for four on the colonoscopies. We're one for four. They got to get that stat up every week. I want to check in here. propofol. My shout out Michael Jackson is the greatest drug ever. I counted 15 seconds I was knocked out. I woke up. And the next thing I know I was in the recovery area. Were you groggy? I was not growing. No, I was fine. You literally don't remember anything. No pain, no suffering. I did have you able to have a regular schedule the rest of the
SPEAKER_03: day. Not really. So I don't want to dissuade anybody from having
SPEAKER_04: this but you do have to take a drink called prep, which clears you out. And when I say clears you out, I love that. Oh, I love it. clears you out. Yeah, I hit a record low weight. I'm 168 now. So that was the one benefit. How much weight did
SPEAKER_03: you lose? Three pounds, maybe. Come on. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Were you working when you were prepping? No, I was working when
SPEAKER_04: I was prepping. So Monday when I was prepping, but then literally, you take this prep stuff an hour later, you're you need to be ready to evacuate at any time. Normally, the diarrhea
SPEAKER_05: is coming out of your mouth. Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04: Let your winners Rain Man David.
SPEAKER_03: We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy. All right, everybody, welcome to another amazing episode of the
SPEAKER_04: all in podcast episode 148. The docket is absurd in the number of lawsuits and the amount of news that has happened in just the last week has been insane. But we want to at the top of the show do a quick correction, right? It's an all in correction. If we make a mistake here, we don't hide it in the show notes. We just talk about it right up front. Sax you were in touch with the air table CEO, how he Lou, who's been a guest on this weekend startups, I'm gonna have him on again, actually soon. Maybe you could just discuss what we got wrong, and how we got it wrong. And then what the correct facts are about air table just quickly here at the top of the show.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, we had a segment a couple weeks ago, we were talking about these high price late stage unicorn rounds needing to get revalued. And the IPO of Instacart was a good example of this where yes, IPO did about 10 billion, but the last private round was at 39 billion. So there is a big wave of re valuations or down rounds coming. And we cited some numbers off the internet regarding air table. As it turns out, not everything on the internet is true. And you're talking about specific journalists might have gotten it wrong. We would say this is actually a tweet storm on x that from a financial account that, you know, appeared on the surface to be correct. And in fact, it did have some correct information, but it was outdated, it was stale. So just the quick correction here is that the the amount of ARR that we cited, which I think was around 150 million was accurate as of the time they did the last round, but that was like three years ago. Furthermore, the growth rate that was cited, which I think was around 15%. That was off that was off by about a three x multiple. So when you put all these things together, I wasn't able to get the exact numbers. But if you just do a little bit of napkin math here, my guess is that air table is somewhere in the half a billion of ARR club with pretty decent
SPEAKER_05: growth. And if you look at the public comps for that, I think the public cost would be something like a Monday, you know, which is doing five to 600 million of ARR coming off a 50% growth rate, maybe forecasting 30% for the next year, that company has been hovering around the seven or $8 billion valuation range 12 x. Yeah, the claim that was made on x was that air table wasn't even worth 1.4 billion that is raised in VC money. I think that's way off. I mean, yeah. And furthermore, you know, what we heard is that air table still has something like two thirds of the money that is raised in the bank. So look, is air table worth the 11 billion that it was valued at at the peak? Probably that's not what the public comps indicate. Would I be a buyer personally at roughly half that price? For sure. For sure. And I think it'll have a nice IPO at some point when they decide they want to do it. So just an important
SPEAKER_04: reminder for everybody is, you know, listen, if information is on the interwebs, it may not be correct. But the top news story in the country is unequivocally Kevin McCarthy being ousted as Speaker of the House on Tuesday, he was voted out in a 216 to 210 vote with eight far right republicans joining all of the Democrats. So those eight GOP members include or led by Matt Gates, obviously, a group of I guess what would be best described sacks as tea party ask members of the GOP contingent, they care mostly about spending and curtailing spending, am I correct? Don't forget all the Democrats. Well, yeah, I'm
SPEAKER_04: putting the Democrats on already kind of I'm just talking about the eight who made this tip over the media is trying to
SPEAKER_05: portray them as these far right, you know, wingers. And I don't think you can actually say that because I don't think Nancy mace fits in that group. I think she does care about spending, but she's not just like, care about spending. I mean, far right to me would be
SPEAKER_04: right. I mean, anything that the media doesn't like they label
SPEAKER_05: far right. But I think you know, Nancy mace is a good example of somebody who is very concerned about spending discipline, but is not like a maggot type Republican. But what is the and
SPEAKER_04: just to just refine this one more time before I keep going, those eight would the common thread would be control spending we're at we have out of control spending is is the reason we're voting a no vote for Kevin McCarthy. I think
SPEAKER_05: there are a couple other pieces of this. If you listen to Nancy mace, some of the other people that were involved here, a lot of the issue comes down to trust. They felt like they can no longer trust Kevin McCarthy, they felt like the things that he had told them in private were not matching up with the things that he would then later do, or that he would say in public or that he would tell the Biden administration. So I think that main issues were, well, I think there's a couple. One was on
SPEAKER_05: spending, he had promised that he would stop doing these giant omnibus spending bills where everything would be lumped into one bill, you get like 24 hours to read it, and then you got to vote up or down on whether you pass this giant spending bill or shut down the government, everyone feels forced to vote for it. He had promised to do single subject spending bills. So military education, welfare, whatever. Yeah, that goes through
SPEAKER_05: a regular budget process. So they felt like he had broke his promise on that. I think also on the issue of Ukraine. There were some trust issues there because what he was telling Republicans in private was not what he was telling the Biden administration in private where he was telling the Biden administration, don't worry, we're gonna get the Ukraine funding through. But then he was sounding different notes with various Republicans. And I think his true feelings on the matter came out in this press conference he did after he was ousted, in which he goes on this long rant about how Putin's the second coming of Adolf Hitler. And if we don't stop him now, he's going to be you know, marching into Paris. And I mean, it was sort of this like unhinged second grade American history style, a view of the war, which regardless of what your view is on it, I think it expressed his true feelings on the matter, which is that when push came to shove, he's more hawkish than Joe Biden. On the issue of Ukraine, he feels that Biden has not done enough. It's safe to say that that position is now very out of step with the Republican caucus. So he is pushing a view on Ukraine that is now very out of step. Moreover, I think that if he had just acted as an honest broker on the issue, which is to say, Listen, I'm just gonna represent the views of my caucus, my caucus is divided on the issue, I'm just gonna let them have an up or down vote on it, then I think he could have survived on that issue. But instead, again, I think he was trying to manipulate things in a direction of continuing Ukraine funding regardless of the views of his caucus. Gates wants to end CRs
SPEAKER_04: continuing resolutions, those extend the funding deadline from October 1 of holidays, claiming this buys Congress time to lump all those individual promotion bills into the omnibus bill, as you correctly pointed out, Gates wants to end that practice and return to regular order passage of individual annual spending bills, not the omnibus. The context that I think is
SPEAKER_03: important, that I think is that the American public should understand is, how is this actually supposed to work so that we don't normalize what these CRs are. So the way that it's supposed to work is that Congress is authorized by law to create 12 spending bills a year. And each of those bills have to map to the large parts of the government. So there's a military bill, there's an education bill, there's a, you know, HHS bill, etc, etc. And those are supposed to be negotiated on the House floor and passed, the Senate is allowed to do a version of the same. If those two things are different, meaning the Senate doesn't take the House bill and creates their own. The law says that you have to create what's called a conference, and a group of people have senators and have Congress people sit in a room, hash out and mediate a resolution. And that is what goes to the President's desk to be signed. That's how it used to be done. But about a decade ago, all of that broke down. And now what happens is you have this thing that Sacks mentioned, which is called the CR, which is essentially a backdoor. It's this release valve that is supposed to be a in emergency break glass type measure that has become fundamentally normalized. And I think what's important to call out is what happened here isn't getting the just attention because it's being characterized on party lines, and not actually being characterized with how America is legally supposed to work as defined in the Constitution. So the Congress is supposed to pass 12 spending bills a year. It's then supposed to get negotiated or approved by the Senate, and then it should go to the President. When you override that with these continuing resolutions, this is the issue that freeberg has been talking about, you balloon the deficit, you balloon the debt, you have all kinds of pork barrel spending, there's zero accountability, the bullets cost $6,000, the umbrella holders cost 15,000. All of this nonsense that just brings us closer and closer to some sort of default or economic contagion. So I actually look at this issue, not as Republican versus Democrat, the far right wing, I think that's misguided interpretation by the mainstream media. I think what this is, is the first chance in a while, where you're not allowed to pass a continuing resolution, where you will have to propose 12 bills, the way the law says you're supposed to. And what that'll mean is that you'll have to negotiate a compromise to get those 12 bills passed. Now, what's crazy is, the Senate actually has six of those bills on their desk, and they haven't even negotiated it. And I think the reason is because they know that the CR is always in the offing. But if this continuing resolution is not allowed, because you fired the speaker, then they'll have to negotiate those bills. And part of what McCarthy did to get elected was say, we will return to the law and not use the in emergency break class. And I think that's what's not it's not understood well, I think by Americans as that is the actual process. We haven't been doing it for a decade. And I'm not a fan of Gates. But I'm glad that somebody did this, because somebody has to draw a line in the sand, the Republicans and Democrats equally have been responsible for breaking the way the American government spends money. And so this is the best way to fix it. Freeburg, you agree with what's gone down here and that this is
SPEAKER_04: worth shutting the government down, etc. Or do you think this
SPEAKER_04: is like where to make the stand because you've been very pro controlling spending as of I and so do you think that this is the best way to do it? I guess
SPEAKER_02: it's more about the United States is facing a fiscal emergency. National debt reported by the Treasury Department increased by $275 billion in a one day report yesterday, $275 billion in a day. The entire TARP program during Oh, wait was $400 billion. That's how out of control our fiscal condition is. And this is a function of rising rates, a function of spending. And, you know, as we talked about many times over, there's an arithmetic to this that at some point, it becomes ever escalating until you step in and do something dramatic about it. So I'm hopeful and I mean, there's a lot of rhetoric, you can watch all the news channels and see a lot of these Congress people get on camera and talk about different things. I think we're seeing more frequently now, people talking about the fiscal crisis that the US is facing. And that this action provides a mechanism, as Chamath points out, for forcing everyone to the table to figure out how do we reduce the impact? How do we chart a path to a solution? Because right now, if you asked anyone in Congress, what's the strategic plan here? There is not going to be an answer from anyone. Everyone's got a different point of view. And everyone's fighting over the deck chairs on the Titanic. And we've got a more significant problem. We're hitting an iceberg. So yeah, I'm hopeful that this causes hopefully a turning point in the never ending spending spree, where everyone gets elected and everyone promises to the folks that they're representing and the folks that funded their political campaigns, some amount of money back out from the government and everyone gets that free money. And at some point, something's got to turn around or the whole thing kind of goes down. So hopefully this is that moment. I don't know. Sax eating. By the way, if the government shut down for weeks and months, to try and figure this out, and for everyone to get aligned with here's the long range strategic plan presented to the American people on how we prevent the US from either inflation or bankruptcy, then I think everyone will feel like it was worth it. Sax has been tons of speculation about what this
SPEAKER_04: is. What's what this is actually about? Is it about Ukraine? Is it about out of control spending? Is it about Matt gates and Kevin McCarthy having some sort of personal grudge against each other? What do you what do you think is at the core of this sex? Well, probably all the above. But I think it's
SPEAKER_05: fundamentally a rejection of the status quo. Kevin McCarthy, if nothing else is a figure of the status quo. I mean, he's worked for 20 years through the system. He's a great fundraiser. I actually attended an event for him down the street here. Of course, all the donors love him. And look, I like Kevin McCarthy, I've contributed to Kevin McCarthy. But at the end of the day, I'm not sure that Kevin McCarthy is a guy who's going to get us out of this mess. And the fundamental problem is he's just too conciliatory. And the idea that you're going to impose spending discipline and get us out of the budgetary mess that we're in the idea that you're going to make that omelet without breaking a few eggs, I think is just kind of silly. So I think we need a tougher speaker who's going to actually live up to the promises of stopping these omnibus bills going back to single subject bills, who is going to represent the views of the majority of the republican caucus on, you know, indefinite infinite Ukraine spending, because he's kind of off center of the Republican Party on that. Why can't the Republican Party
SPEAKER_04: be in unison on this is explain what the what's the rift inside the GOP right now? Well, he actually has debates in this
SPEAKER_05: party. What you see is the democrats are in total lockstep, and they just support whatever is the status quo. But the republicans actually have debates inside their party. And there is a big debate right now on how we handle Ukraine. And I think there is growing opposition to a blank check. As long as it takes policy towards Ukraine, we've already appropriated over 100 billion. What's the return on investment of that? The counter?
SPEAKER_04: You think that's the key, not the the CRs?
SPEAKER_05: I think it's both of those issues combined with the fact that increasingly McCarthy was not seen as an honest broker. Listen, I think McCarthy could have had whatever views he wanted to, if he was perceived as somebody who actually represented a majority of the republican caucus. But what Nancy mace, what Matt gates, what these others who rebelled were saying, is, listen, what Kevin told us is not what he did. And I personally witnessed this aspect to McCarthy. Okay, so when I went to this event down the street here, I heard him gave this whole Pootler rant. And then afterwards, I came up to him and said, Kevin, what are you talking about? Do you really want to cause war three? And all of a sudden, he backpedaled and he started saying these conciliatory things. And I was like, okay, maybe he just went on this, like to where, you know, it was kind of off topic.
SPEAKER_03: He tooted. Did you read to it?
SPEAKER_05: But after I kind of had this, like sidebar with him, I'm like, Okay, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe, you know, I think he he promised that he would impose saying he's in the pocket of
SPEAKER_04: special interests. Let's be clear. Well, I think
SPEAKER_03: well, no, not quite Jason, because he didn't quote to to he's just quoted and he just he re tweeted it. What I would say is that he was really good in any particular
SPEAKER_05: meeting at saying conciliatory things to get somebody to like him and to get him is what you're saying. Well, I mean, I
SPEAKER_04: think a lot of politicians are. So he told me what I wanted to
SPEAKER_05: hear. I think he promised that he would get out. Would you
SPEAKER_04: have been with the eight or with the guys the fundamental facts? Would you have voted with the eight? Or would you voted with the rest as if you were there with the aid? I mean,
SPEAKER_05: look, I like McCarthy. He's a likable guy. But again, I think that press conference he held revealed the truth of it, which is, he was bs me his real view is that we need to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. And he told me something different. His grand bargain was that he would stop these
SPEAKER_03: continuing resolution pork barrel bills. That was the grand bargain. That was the thing that said, and if I don't do it, you guys can vote me out. Do you guys remember this? Yeah, you know, that was his negotiation. So this really was kind of like a fait accompli the minute he decided to pass and yet another pork barrel bill. You also seem kind of frustrated that he just he seemed like he
SPEAKER_04: was spent in dealing with all this. So
SPEAKER_03: the Republican Party allowed Matt gates to get all of the attention and to be like the organizing principle because he's such a loathsome individual to so many people both in the Republican Party and outside. The guy the guy broke a fundamental promise. And that promise wasn't that provocative. It's just like, yeah, we're gonna pass 12 bills, we're just gonna follow the law. And he couldn't follow the law. And so why doesn't anybody else stand up? Why does it have to take these eight kind of coalescing with with the Dems? It's it's really nutty, actually. Yeah, it's a very strange series of
SPEAKER_05: events. And by the way, I think you make it just your last point there. This would not have happened if Hakeem Jeffries didn't send down word that all the democrats were supposed to vote with Matt gates. I think that this is a vote against their long term interest. Because the fact the matter is that Kevin McCarthy ultimately was a very pliant speaker. And he was giving the democrats what they wanted on spending on keeping government funded and open forever at higher and higher rates of spending. And on Ukraine, they're never going to get somebody who is more compliant.
SPEAKER_03: To your point, I think what what is really interesting and hopefully beneficial for America is we've broken the seal on unseating the speaker interterm, if they kind of like violate a handful of these defined things. And I hope one of these things is the best thing we could do for America is just force all of these folks in Congress to negotiate 12 bills a year, keep them busy, focus on those bills, get to like a compromise, get it to the Senate, get it voted, get it to the President's side. That's it. If they if they just did that, we would probably spend a third to half of less than we do now.
SPEAKER_04: Just is Gates the winner and all this to see it look like By the way, just just so you guys know, like when you try to
SPEAKER_03: propose elements of a bill, right in one of those real bills, okay, it has to go to the CBO and it has to get scored. Right. So for example, we've tried to propose certain aspects of legislation. And no matter whatever we think about it, there at least is an independent body that scores it and says, here's the x year cost, the y year cost, here's the benefits. And so you get a very clear sense and a transparent sense that's published everybody about what this is. In CR, you can avoid all of that stuff. There is no close study of any of this stuff. And you know, David is right, you get it on a Thursday night at like 8pm. And you vote Friday at six, you know, or like at midday, how is anybody supposed to approve a multi trillion dollar package logically, you know, it's riddled with nonsense.
SPEAKER_04: It makes no sense that you don't break up the work and do it thoughtfully each time. I guess, should they change this ability for one member to propose a resolution to remove speaker? Yeah,
SPEAKER_05: it's comically easy to vacate the speaker based on the rules they passed. However, I think it's important to understand why that rule happened. It happened because McCarthy was so desperate to become speaker. If you go back to the history of this thing. McCarthy was actually passed over for speaker back in 2015. When he made this gaffe on TV about the Benghazi Select Committee being set up to hurt Hillary's poll numbers. Obviously, that wasn't an admission that helped Republicans. And he only got the job this year, by making it so easy to take it away from him. And remember, they did like 15 rounds of voting. So this is the problem. Frankly, one of the problems with McCarthy is he is a little bit too desperate to have the job. Sometimes when you get a guy who is so desperate for a job, they're not that effective in it, because they're too worried about it being taken away. What you want is a guy who's like, look, take it or leave it, I could do this job or not do this job. That's the only way you're gonna get somebody tough in the job. I think the guy they should look to right now would be Jim Jordan. I think Jim Jordan would be excellent. Because at the end of the day, you want a speaker who's going to be feared not loved, like Nancy Pelosi, quite frankly, you need a Republican speaker who's going to be tough, who doesn't give a shit if you like him or not. I mean, this is I think Kevin's downfall is that he cared too much about people liking him. As a result in the room, he would always tell you something that you liked. But the problem is that he can't deliver on that. Yeah. So let's get ready to move on to the
SPEAKER_04: topic. But just a final question here. Do you guys think a shutdown in a couple of weeks because that's how long the extension is would be productive for the country if it if it becomes the backstop against out of control spending? If it stops the CR process, it'll be effective to the tune
SPEAKER_03: of about $500 billion. It'll be half a trillion dollars effective. So the a couple of weeks of the government not spending
SPEAKER_04: on any meaning if you if you kill the omnibus bill, yeah. And
SPEAKER_03: or you have like an extremely slimmed down version of that bill and you revert back to this 12 bills a year process that's supposed to be the law. It'll be more effective. You'd save half a trillion dollars. Yeah, just finish the point on that. I think we have to just look at
SPEAKER_05: this Wall Street Journal article that came out this morning, where it was called rising interest rates mean deficits finally matter. Finally, there's a record. We called it we called it Yeah, finally, there's a recognition both politically and economically that our deficits and debt are too big. And the key point of this article is says most of the increase, this is in long term rates is due to the part of yields called the term premium, which has nothing to do with inflation or short term rates. So until now, our interest rate problems have been about the Fed raising short term rates to combat inflation. Now we're seeing a separate problem, which is long rates are going up. And the long rates are going up because of this concern that the federal government has too much debt. And so bondholders are starting to demand a higher long term premium to hold that debt is what we've been warning about for a long time now for a year, and it's finally happening. So unless the political system gets serious about reducing deficits, even if inflation comes down, and even if the Fed cuts short term rates, you're going to have a problem with long term rates remaining high. And that is going to keep the cost of capital high. And that is going to reduce long term innovation in the economy. It's bad for us. It's horrible for us. Yeah, terrible for us. Let's go to
SPEAKER_04: another troubling situation. What's happening at the southern border, obviously, videos of migrants crossing the southern border are all over x Reddit, YouTube, etc. One side saying it's chaos, the other side, arguably been ignoring it. So let's start with the two numbers that we actually know put a bunch of time into trying to figure out if there are any accurate numbers talk to a bunch of people on Twitter and other places. There are only we have very, very flawed data on what's actually happening there. We do have anecdotal videos, obviously, our friend Elon went down to the border and did a video himself. The best data with the caveat that it's very flawed is the count of encounters. This is not folks who get through. This is folks who were encountered. So this is the official southern land border encounters from the US Customs and Border Protection Agency since 2022 2020 and 2021. There were obviously COVID issues on the border. So it was much more locked down half a million people in 2021 point seven in 2021 2.4 rounding up there and in 2023 supposedly rounding up 2 million through 10 months tracking on pace for 2.3 the exact same as last year. However, it certainly doesn't look like that. It's the exact same. Again, that's from the Border Patrol. And that is encounters not actually people who got through. And then the border states are saying that those numbers are wrong. And there's a lot more people getting through and Eric Adams in New York, where a lot of these people are being sent. And this has obviously been the most politicized issue I think of the last decade. Governor Abbott in August of 2022, quote, New York City is the ideal destination for these migrants who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Adams has posted about within the sanctuary city. Here are the clips and then I'll get your responses from those when we get back.
SPEAKER_00: This is horrific when you think about what the governor is doing the governor of Texas, but we are going to set the right message the right tone of being here for these families. Before
SPEAKER_01: we begin busing illegal immigrants up to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos and all the problems that come with it. Now the rest of America is understanding exactly what is going on.
SPEAKER_04: All right, so this is obviously something that New York City is unable to handle. Those are from August of last year when this was flaming up. According to Abbott, Texas has given bus tickets to 42,000 migrants. And as of late September, 119 migrants have arrived in New York City since the spring of 22. About 30% of New York City migrants have been busted from Texas. I'll stop there and just get your general reactions to what you all believe is happening at the border. Since we're getting a highly politicized take on each of these, it's become super polarized. And the numbers, any accurate numbers do not exist. Sex. I don't think it's hard to
SPEAKER_05: understand what's going on at the border. I think there are people who want to understand the numbers of what's going on.
SPEAKER_04: I don't even think the numbers are that hard. You have a
SPEAKER_05: better source of number. I have some numbers that are similar to yours. But so statistically, goes back to 2019. So the numbers I have are about in 2019, which is when remain in Mexico went into effect. The number was 851,000. Then it went down to 400,000 because of COVID and title 42. Then in 2021, we had about 1.7 million, which was a new record. Then in 2022, we are up to 2.7 million, which was a new record. And the question is, what is happening in 2023? Obviously, we don't have a full year of data. But given that we've eliminated remain in Mexico, and title 42, I don't think anybody seriously doubts that we're headed for a new record. And in fact, the Washington Post had articles in August and September saying that those months were all time records. And now they're surpassing 11,000 daily migrant encounters at the border just twice last week. So and you know what, what Elon reported from the link, he sent that link. So I'll have to then also just use
SPEAKER_04: those statistics is an aggregator. They don't do primary research to see now. So which one of those numbers are pretty similar to yours? Maybe from the same source. We also
SPEAKER_05: have the video evidence, we have the fact that you know, Elon went down there and reported exactly what we're seeing in other contexts, which is new records virtually every day and every week and every month, the Border Patrol agents are basically being overrun. And so you made the correct point that this only measures encounters, it doesn't measure the actual number of people going through. Well, if Border Patrol is overrun, then the number of encounters relative to the people getting through is obviously going to be very understated. So I think we're on track for another huge record in 2023. And the point is that the pace is accelerating. Elon gave the simple math, there's 8 billion people in the world, how many of them would want to be in the United States if they could? Probably billions, at least half of them, at least half of them.
SPEAKER_05: And I don't blame them. Okay, I want to be in this country. Okay, but obviously, we can't handle all the people who want to be here. And the word has gone out via social media via word of mouth that the border is effectively open. And we've seen numerous videos, it wasn't just Elon when RFK went down there to Yuma, Arizona, there's a big hole in the wall, and people are just lining up and but it was 100 different countries, right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we have different countries, and Elon broadcast
SPEAKER_05: the exact same thing coming from Eagle Pass. So the point is, you've got all of these different points where there is no wall, and people are just lining up and being let through. And in some cases, they're just running through because the Border Patrol is overrun. So we effectively have no border. I mean, let's admit the truth now. Yeah. And I think that the mainstream media and the Biden administration, their policy was basically see no evil, hear no evil to deny the reality of what was happening. Eric Adams was one of the first Democrats to break ranks saying, Listen, we can see the migrants lining up in tents going around the block, we are trying to put them up in hotels is costing us $12 billion. We can't afford it. But Eric Adams has always been a little bit of a maverick inside the Democratic Party. We talked about how he was tough on crime during the Chasen Boudin era, which is why I supported him moderate, but is a moderate but then you had Kathy Hochul, who's the governor of New York, who's nothing if not a machine politician, just in the last week saying we cannot handle this. So she broke ranks, which was I think, a big news story. And now the latest is that the Biden's administration itself might be breaking ranks. I think Jamaat, you posted a really interesting story that mayorkas, who's the Secretary of DHS just posted a notice in the Federal Register, which said there is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the board. They don't say wall, don't say the W word, I just in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States. Now there was no press conference on this. The way that this got reported is some reporter was doing their job keeping track of the Federal Register, and saw that mayorkas had posted a notice saying that they need to construct a wall.
SPEAKER_05: Now Biden hasn't said this. No one in the administration said this, but clearly obvious reasons. Yeah, for obvious
SPEAKER_05: reasons. So
SPEAKER_03: Jason, what do you think the obvious reason is? Well, the
SPEAKER_04: obvious reason is Trump's entire presidency was predicated on hey, we're going to build this wall and but I'm saying go back and say that he was right is untenable to national security.
SPEAKER_03: It's like, yes. And so they're gonna do right then obviously,
SPEAKER_04: and build the wall, but they don't want to say it. So it's just ridiculous. But just one important point to what David said New York City has the right to shelter. So that means every immigrant who comes here, they have to put them in a hotel. And these are like, turns out four or $500 a night hotels. So this has become cataclysmic. There obviously needs to be a border. And it's ridiculous to say there shouldn't be a border. Nobody believes that. I don't know why this administration just can't admit that there needs to be a border of some kind. And we can talk about what the wall but from well, no, actually, it's a
SPEAKER_04: better solution than a wall. But we'll get to that. What is it?
SPEAKER_04: Well, I don't want to jump to my feet had something to say. So tomorrow, I'll explain in a second, if you want, or I can jump to it. No, jump to jump to it. Okay. So obviously, people are talking about a wall walls are a terrible solution. Because there are ladders that can go over them pretty easily. What you really need to have is eyes on it. And the two best solutions, you can see them here Israel has had a really they understand borders really well. And so what you're seeing if you're watching are these towers, which do a great job of monitoring the border. And you could put about 2000 of these towers they have a range of easily a mile. This is next gen border by EBIT systems is Israeli based company. It's 160 foot surveillance tower. And real actually has a century tower as well. Our friend, friend of the pod, Palmer Luckies company, Andrew. And obviously, I would the border patrol already has 10 of the towers.
SPEAKER_05: Why do you see as an either or I'm just curious, like, why don't you?
SPEAKER_04: I think that these smart lampposts, as I call them, are the number one first thing to do because you could deploy these in a fraction of the time, you could have 1000 of these in under a year for $4 billion. And so these only cost $2 million each. The 10 towers that were put in were put in at 26 million in the pilot. So if you put 2000 of these towers in, you just picked four different vendors, they do 500 reach and you test them. That would be $4 billion. That would be nothing. What do you do when you when the camera spots person you send
SPEAKER_04: intercepts there and then you build the walls where people are crossing most so that would be my crossing most they're crossing. You build what you look for hotspots David so you would you but we don't there's hotspots that we don't know about. So I'd say you deploy these for 4 billion very quickly and then where there are hotspots you obviously build walls, but you're still gonna be frank about this. Sure be as frank as you like. Look, regardless of what you think
SPEAKER_05: about Trump, this may orchis revelation completely and utterly vindicates his approach to wanting to build a wall and there's so many people who won't just admit that he was right that we need a strong border wall. Not because it's perfect. Not because you can't climb over it if you have the right tools, but because a wall is more defensible than an open field. Now look, I'm all in favor of these towers and the cameras and my understanding is that a lot of the parts of Trump's wall did have cameras on them. Yeah, no, he gets credit for that too. That you have video now coming out of 1000s of people streaming across running. The word is out. You need a wall to stop that you also then need cameras and border guards and all the rest of it. Just so you know, 2000 miles of wall is going to be
SPEAKER_04: like a decade long project. Okay, it's only a decade long if
SPEAKER_05: you allow all of these core challenges that are designed to frustrate it. The fact of the matter is, look, we don't need 2000 miles of wall because there are a lot of natural barriers along the border, you know, where you have deep rivers or mountains or whatever, we're not going to need the wall. However, there are pieces of the wall that were literally laying on the ground. They were unfinished from Trump's term. By the way, Trump should have gotten that done. He did it. In any event, whatever. The point is the Biden administration was actually selling those pieces of wall for scrap metal for two cents on the dollar. This was a story that came out. Now they're admitting that we need the wall that was pure politics. That makes no sense. They had the construction materials. They should have just finished it. That is American. Yeah, that's
SPEAKER_04: utterly ridiculous. That's like crazy. It's because the American
SPEAKER_03: government didn't like who said the right thing. Yeah. And the tone in which he said it. Yes. And they didn't like the
SPEAKER_04: separating of children from whatever and they politicize that both parties are equally just gross. It should be a point based system, you lock the border, and you allow people in, you know, as I've said 10 times on this podcast based on merit, what they're going to contribute to our society, those were that's recruitment, some amount of people who are need asylum because they're going to be murdered, ie Afghanistan, people who supported us Afghanis who supported us during the war. And then finally, the ordering process of people applying to come in here, do your jobs, everybody. It's just so please,
SPEAKER_05: Nick,
SPEAKER_03: what happens when you get to the border guys, do you just get admitted to America?
SPEAKER_05: Guys, this is insane. Okay. The Biden administration started auctioning off what they called spare border wall parts. Okay. I mean, how does Biden live this down? I think this could cost
SPEAKER_04: me like, yeah, you're 100% right about that. Yeah, I think this
SPEAKER_04: is like, this is a setup for a very bad ad. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think this is just because it's become so politicized. Point based system recruitment over chaos, build a wall build the towers. What do you do in the meantime, there
SPEAKER_03: there are 10s of 1000s of people a day hitting the southern border National Guard, we have something called the National
SPEAKER_04: Guard, we send them there, they have to be deployed anyway, you just deploy the national
SPEAKER_03: but say more, say more like you would put the military to basically turn these people around. Of course, of course,
SPEAKER_04: you turn them around. Yes, that's it. Well, so you build a wall, you National Guard will be quickest, the towers we second quick quickest and the wall is going to take forever. But you need to what how do you but how do you process the asylum claim?
SPEAKER_03: Because isn't the whole point of asylum like, you can't send them back to this country in which they're going to be killed in. And so it's an imperfect process, Chammoth, obviously. So Saxonye and a few other folks, we held a fundraiser for Vivek Ramaswamy last week. And we talked about this a lot. And one of the things that we learned is that all the people that come to the southern border are trained in YouTube and Tiktok and Instagram, exactly what to say so that you have to accept the asylum claim. And for the asylum, there should be a limited number of them. That's
SPEAKER_04: it. Just you have this many per year that you take. I
SPEAKER_03: understand. But but you don't know whether that person who was helping us in Afghanistan ends up coming in October and not in March. And that's the reason why they can't get in. The thing that I learned is that it's a it's a specific script. It's available in multiple languages, right? So anybody who gets to the southern border knows exactly what to say so that America is forced to accept you. That's not how asylum should
SPEAKER_05: work. The bad news is not everybody's going to get in. Not
SPEAKER_04: everybody will get in. That's it. Jacob, there's two things
SPEAKER_05: we need to do in addition to your point about sending troops to the border because we do need the manpower. Yeah, it's obvious. Number one to chamois point, you can't just say the word asylum and get in. That doesn't make sense. You have to produce evidence of actually meeting the case for asylum, which is not being economically disadvantaged as being politically prosecuted, where if you're sent back to your home country, they're going to put you in jail or kill you. And there aren't many countries in the world, quite frankly, where that is going to be a valid claim. Just to be honest about it. I mean, if you have a freedom fighter from Iran coming over, who's going to jail or killed, let him in. But that's not most of the people lining up at our border. If you're coming from Mexico, there's a very
SPEAKER_04: small chance that you are being the other thing we got to do is
SPEAKER_05: you got to reinstitute remain in Mexico. That was the policy. Yeah. You can't just waiting on this side of the border because they're never going to show up in court. Yeah. I mean, listen,
SPEAKER_04: we want immigration to this country. It has to be logical. And the fact is, everybody wants to come here. That's a great thing. We should be taking advantage of that. But it can't be chaos. It's got to be orderly. That's what everybody wants. I don't know why how this became a political issue. Everybody wants orderly. Everybody wants recruitment. Nobody wants an open board. But Jake, in order for it not to be
SPEAKER_05: a political issue, you need both parties to agree and they currently don't. I mean, think about it. What's in Biden's interest right now is to do a 180 on this issue before it's too late. He's got to do it. Yes, absolutely. And it's very
SPEAKER_04: simple for him to say, which is because everybody knows that the border doesn't have a wall. We've seen an increase, there's been a 10 x increase. This the situation on the field has changed. Therefore, we're going to change. And we're going to do all these things. And if one of them is building a wall, and you want to say gotcha, you can say gotcha. But it's the right thing to do because data has changed my opinion. Where do we get to the point where data can't change your opinion? Data should
SPEAKER_04: change your opinion. The data is clear that more people are coming through. That's why I made such a point at the top of this is like, we don't even have good data. What these sensor towers would do would at least give us data, and we give us clarity, and then you only need, you know, a unit every half mile. So you need 4000 units patrolling the border, and they would catch everybody. It just isn't as expensive as people think it is. This could be I mean, the last the last amount of money we gave, what was the last appropriation for Ukraine sacks since I'll give you a red. Well, we've already
SPEAKER_05: appropriated or authorized close to 100 billion. And there's 24 billion. Okay, so for three or 4% of that cost, we could have
SPEAKER_04: these sensor towers. It's crazy. We're defending Ukraine's border
SPEAKER_05: but not our own. It's a very valid point independent.
SPEAKER_05: Republicans up in arms. It's this combined with the the lack of fiscal discipline. Now, the craziness about this is if we
SPEAKER_04: were sitting here 20 years ago, the Republicans were trying to open the border to have more low skilled workers to work in restaurants to work in businesses. That's not the place we are today. We have too many people coming in. These are not just it's even worse skilled workers to pick vegetables. It's a different group. There was a point in time, Jason, where the
SPEAKER_05: Wall Street Journal editorial page, which is really the voice of the GOP establishment, yes, supported a constitutional amendment in favor of an open border. This was very much the point of view of the old Republican Party, which was this libertarian, open borders, open trade, free markets position. And the results of those policies have been partially disastrous. I mean, I understand the value of free trade and so forth. But and obviously, when I have high schooled immigration, we've talked about that. But it was too much of a good thing. I mean, they didn't draw intelligent distinctions. But we still have I think this to your point about the battle inside the Republican Party. We still have that old GOP establishment. And now there's this new populist wing that wants to make I think sensible changes. Here's the Wall Street Journal story
SPEAKER_04: from 2001. Open after borders. Why not? There it is. Yeah, that
SPEAKER_05: was Bob Bartley, who was the longtime editorial page editor. He was kind of like a hero in the conservative movement. When I was in college, I read a great book by him called the seven fat years about supply side economics. And I think he was right about a lot of that stuff. But along with that economic policy came, I think this open borders, completely open trade view that I think produced a lot of negative results and has to be revisited. And by the way, there's a third leg of that stool, which is forever wars. The Wall Street Journal is one of the most pro Ukraine publications there is both in the news pages and in the editorial page. And they have never revisited the results of our disastrous foreign policy where we keep intervening all over the world. This is the old Republican Party. There's a new Republican Party that is emerging. And unfortunately, Kevin McCarthy found himself on the wrong side of that divide. All right, so moving on to our next topic, there was a notable
SPEAKER_04: accident with a cruise robo taxi in San Francisco this week or not. This is being framed by some as the first automated cruise vehicle to get in an accident, but what actually happened is not accurate. So there was a hit and run incident in San Francisco when we struck by a human driver. That human driver fled the scene. The hit and run launched tragically the woman underneath a cruise vehicle. The cruise vehicle braked aggressively according to cruise but stopped with its rear tire on top of the woman's leg. Police asked crews to keep the vehicle in place and lock it which they did. Emergency respondents arrived and use the jaws of life to get the car off the woman's leg. Local media picked the story up. And the way the police asked crews to leave the car leave the
SPEAKER_02: car on the woman's leg. Yes. I do that. Well, I think actually,
SPEAKER_04: sometimes, no, no, I do think for my time as an EMT, sometimes moving the person can cause more damage than leaving it until you have the emergency services on the scene. So I like to wait for emergency services in let because moving it because it could be broken bone hit your firm, your femoral artery, and then you could bleed out. So they just say stay where you are. Don't make any more movements until through the car on top of them. That's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02: It's on the person's leg. So that would mean that they're not
SPEAKER_04: in any danger. It might be painful. But if you were to move them, I was taught this when I was an EMT. You if you move people, you have to be very careful because you can cause a spine injury, they can become paralyzed or you could cut a major artery. You got to be very how long were you an EMT? I was the first class of what was called EMT frs first responders and I worked at Bravo ambulance in Brooklyn as on a volunteer one for about three or four years. Did you have like a tight outfit like a tight polo? What
SPEAKER_03: do you wear? Like skinny jeans? Did you have skinny jeans, green
SPEAKER_04: pants and a white collared shirt? And yeah, I never told you guys the first call I ever got. I never told you that story
SPEAKER_03: where you like were you like a sexy paramedic or were you just like a pair of whatever you want me to be from whatever works for
SPEAKER_04: your fantasies. blushing. First, sexy paramedic. I was a little sexy as a person. I've
SPEAKER_04: got him blushing. Here's my first call. I swear to God, it's the night before Thanksgiving, Wednesday nights, a big night in Brooklyn. I don't know if in other places, but the night before Thanksgiving, everybody goes out and parties. So big Wednesday happens. First call comes in. I was I was originally the person who picked up the I was the operator at the 911. But then my second job I was on the bus. And so first call first shift is big Wednesday guy gets we get a call that guy got stabbed. We go. The guy is outside TJ Bentley's and I kid you not the guy was in charge of the ambulance says cut the jacket off. I take my shears. We have these really sharp scissors and boom we go right up to sleep we cut his jacket. He goes Oh, my members only jacket. We cut him open and his giant hairy chest. Blood is pumping out like it's like a little water fountain and the guy who was running the bus I remember yesterday puts his hand up both the eyes shows this guy you got bigger problems in this member only jacket. He says get the mast pants the mask pants so you know are used in war. We get trained in them you never use them. Mask pants are a blood pressure cuff you put over people's pants to take the blood in their legs, put it into their chest so that they at least survive. The guy says get
SPEAKER_04: the mask but I said get the mask pants. The mask pants are packed away you never use them. I'm getting the mask pants out. We're wailing down fourth Avenue to get this guy and his blood pressure dropping his heart rates dropping blood all over the bus. We're trying to control the bleeding he survived to save him. We saved him. Yeah, but that was my first call. First
SPEAKER_02: call. Nuts. This was a volunteer gig. We paid for it. Nope. Not everything's about money free bird. Not everything's
SPEAKER_04: about money free. But I'm not saying it is I'm just asking.
SPEAKER_02: I'm joking with you.
SPEAKER_04: To be a superhero. Yeah. That's all.
SPEAKER_02: I texted I texted Jamie Jason's brother and I asked him if this
SPEAKER_03: was true. And I asked for a photo. Hey, Nick, you want to you want to put up the photo please? Oh, there I am.
SPEAKER_03: This is the guy you want to come restart. Dave, did your heart
SPEAKER_04: stop? Did your heart stop? I'm gonna resuscitate it. Nick show
SPEAKER_03: the other one. This is this is the original outfit when he became a pair. No, this better not be x rated. Oh, God. Oh,
SPEAKER_02: there. I like the second one better. Yeah, we know which one like better days. nurse is that a thermometer he's got? What is he having?
SPEAKER_05: thermometer? I think that's like a coke bottle. I think that
SPEAKER_04: could be a thermometer. We might need to check your temperature, David. It's like a Pepsi bottle. We're gonna take your
SPEAKER_03: temperature, Dave. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04: What kind of temperature does that take for you?
SPEAKER_05: Well, I know it's gonna be really hot.
SPEAKER_03: Jason, you did a great job. We really appreciate your contributions. Wow. Great job.
SPEAKER_04: All right. Back to the story about Cruz. Now this terrible accident. Wow, we got derailed. Yeah. Well, thanks for the work
SPEAKER_02: you did. Jake. Thanks for your service.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna take your vitals.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, local media picked up a little tattoo on your arm to
SPEAKER_04: that was that was removable. Local media picked up on this reporting that Cruz was responsible for the incident. Director of News for the San Francisco Chronicle, which is a lunatic publication. Woman run over by Cruz self driving car on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, pulled from under rear axle circumstances under investigation. The San Francisco Standard posted on x a woman suffered traumatic injuries after being trapped under a Cruz robo taxi in downtown San Francisco Monday night. Fire Department spokesperson said few weeks ago, as you know, a video circulated on x formerly known Twitter of 20 or so cruise vehicles causing a massive traffic jam at an intersection in Austin. The robo taxi provider issue has become very divisive here in San Francisco. There are now multiple companies working on a mutual in San
SPEAKER_03: Francisco will put pylons to break the car. Yeah, yeah. Why
SPEAKER_04: would they do that? Because they're lunatics. And it represents technology. That's the real story here. The real
SPEAKER_02: story is the very deep disdain for technological progress. And the second story I think that's so important is the total lack of assumption of risk, generally in the US, which limits progress in meaningful ways. Let me just pull up some data that I shared here. So Nick, if you pull up this first chart, I'll give you guys some some numbers. For every 100 million miles driven in the US, there's about one and a half deaths car accident deaths. There's about 3.2 trillion miles driven per year in the US. So about 45,000 people die from auto accidents each year. This is a crazy number. 2.3 million people have auto accident related injuries in the US each year. And there's 6 million car crashes each year. In the US. That's one crash for every half million miles driven. Pretty, you know, incredible statistics. So if you look at this chart, it kind of shows the car fatalities over time. Now, what's the leading cause of car fatalities? We'll go to the next distracted driving. Number one, I should have I should have done this as a quiz. Number one DUI.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, that is unbelievable that even this day, yeah, number two speeding. Yeah, not using your seatbelt. So by
SPEAKER_02: the way, all three of those are the same. Yeah, also 80% of those 80% of deaths are DUI speeding and seatbelt non use. Now go to an autonomous driving words, those are all opt in. So now go to an autonomous driving world. You won't see DUI's. Those things are programmed to not speed. Obviously, they're not going to run if you don't put your seatbelt on. And then the fourth one is distracted driving. The real question is what incremental accidents or what incremental errors do autonomous cars make that might, you know, kind of cause new deaths or new accidents. But the net is that we have an incredible number of car accidents, 6 million accidents a year, two and a half million injuries a year 45,000 deaths a year, most of which can be prevented by things that are just basic human stupidity. The first three are all opt in. So
SPEAKER_04:
SPEAKER_03: what you're saying is Warren Buffett and Geico are probably responsible for lobbying and creating this mess in San Francisco. Do the insurance companies need to exist a chamath conspiracy corner? Well, I actually think there's a very
SPEAKER_02: different driver for why these things so I just want to make the case first off, that if you if you zoom out and you don't take the anecdotal story of the woman trapped under the cruise car, it's an awful story. But that anecdote allows people to heighten their fear and heighten their emotion, and create a response to autonomous driving as if that is a cause of a problem. But if you zoom out and you ask the question, dude, 50,000 people a year are dying because of human stupidity that we can just completely take off the streets. It's such a no brainer that this technology should progress. And I'll give you guys another story. In 1999, there was the clinical trials for gene therapy had begun. And there was a guy named gelsinger. He was a young kid, I think he was 18 or 19 years old, and he passed away from the gene therapy. And it turns out that there was actually Dr. malpractice that was primarily responsible for his death. After that happened, the FDA and the regulator stepped in, and they basically put a halt to all gene therapy clinical trials for about seven years. The number of lives that were lost during that seven years that went on that we did not make progress on getting gene therapy programs to market is significantly higher than the number of people that would have lost lives, which by the way, it turns out when you go back to this, this particular death was driven by Dr. malpractice, not by the gene therapy technology necessarily itself. And a lot of the stuff was understood. And I think we've heard Peter Thiel and others speak a lot about how the US has lost our appetite for risk. We say that if anyone dies, or if any bad thing happens, a new technology should not progress. But when we look at the benefit of new technology relative to the cost of it, many of these technologies should progress at an accelerated pace, not at a decelerated pace, and the stepping in to stop these things from moving forward, because number one, we're rudely afraid of new technology. Number two, we you know, we kind of want to, there's a lot of regulatory capture and incumbency that wants to see these things not succeed. I think we're really denying ourselves, in many cases, the opportunity to realize progress because we're so concerned about any loss. nuclear fission is a really great example of this three mile island accident. And Fukushima, you know, if you look at the total number of lives lost, and there's incredible statistics, which I should probably not pull off the top of my head, I should probably make sure I get the right numbers. But Chernobyl is another good example. If you look at the total number of incremental cancers, and the total number of lives that were lost from Chernobyl, you look at three Mile Island, you look at Fukushima, you can actually sex you can you can make a statistical argument that even with those extraordinary cataclysmic disasters, the number of lives that could have been improved the number of lives that could have been saved, the progress that people have been could have been could have made the number of people that could have been pulled out of poverty, if we made cheap, abundant energy available at an accelerated pace, rather than at a decelerated pace, it could have had a much more significant effect. So I view this in the lens, this autonomous driving backlash in the lens of what we see with a lot of new technologies, which is we lose our appetite for risk, we lose our tolerance for any sort of incremental loss. And we lose perspective on the fact that that loss is far, far, far outweighed relative to the gains that you gain, if you can get that technology into market faster, not slower. And I think that's just such a real kind of storyline that's not told very often about how technology and progress is limited, particularly in the modern age, because once you have enough stuff, you're not willing to take as much risk. Meanwhile, you see China building 450 nuclear fission stations, and the US building done. And I think that that's part of the
SPEAKER_02: story of where the US is today. Yeah, I mean, I know that was a
SPEAKER_02: big rant. But for me, I'm just like, so sensitive to the stuff, you know, like, all of this, like anti tech stuff and anti progress stuff, because you then pick an anecdote and you focus on the anecdote and you miss the bigger fucking picture. Well,
SPEAKER_03: what's so funny about San Francisco is this, it's the city that both is the first to approve the testing of it. And where there's a small fraction of citizens who try to go and sabotage it. I guess the next issue is how close are we to
SPEAKER_04: having these at scale cruises currently in San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix, Waymo, very expensive cars, by the way. They're currently in San Francisco and Phoenix 24 seven and go launch in LA soon. And Tesla has been working on this, you know, it's another example of this SpaceX, some shrapnel
SPEAKER_02: got blown into the uninhabited desert lands around Boca Chica, Texas. You're talking about starship. It's the starship, the big one. Yeah. And they come in and they're like, shut the whole thing down. You can't have shrapnel flying around. Think about the risk tolerance equation here. So if you delay SpaceX by six months, to make sure that shrapnel doesn't fly through the desert, that's six months longer till humans can perhaps inhabit the moon, go to Mars, do all these extraordinary things. This is what I mean about the lack of tolerance for risk. We have to assume that there is a cost in moving things forward, there has to be a cost in progress. You don't go fight a war and try and move the front lines of a battlefield further into the enemy territory and assume you're going to have no loss. And all of human progress needs to be thought about in a similar way, we have to have some degree of loss and some tolerance for risk as we try and make progress with our species. And technology always is going to have setbacks, it's always going to have mistakes. But if the net benefit far outweighs those mistakes, we have to be willing to accept it and gets everyone to kind of take a broader perspective on what we're doing, that this isn't just about maintaining status quo and not getting hurt. This is about the great benefits we get from moving things forward. And we've lost that in such a profound way over the last 50 years in Western culture. Another great example of this to add to your tirade is
SPEAKER_04: challenge trials. And these have been banned for a long time. And if you don't know what a challenge trial is, is you introduce something like let's say COVID into a person who has had a COVID vaccine. And yeah, they're assuming some risk in doing this. But it was a young person, as we saw, probably wouldn't be that much risk. And there are people who would do it. And there are this whole concept of challenge trials could reduce in the long term, a massive amount of deaths, but it's not allowed because of ethics issues. What are your thoughts on that freebird challenge trials?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's look, there's so many examples, we could just keep going through this and from energy markets and nuclear technology to biotechnology to space technology to I've lived it. I mean, like GMO technology and bioengineering and food systems. There's a fear and a concern and like Rob Henderson said at our summit, I've always viewed those to be luxury beliefs, that this idea that I don't want to have my precious things changed, when the benefit really accrues mostly to the poorest people in the world, the people that is by the way,
SPEAKER_04: because that's an important point that people don't realize
SPEAKER_02: when you make things more productive, whether it's an acre of land to make more food, or a unit of energy and the cost comes down per unit of energy. Those of us who already have a lot of stuff and have all of our basic needs met, we have housing, we have shelter, we have food, we have energy, we can afford it, we live in a great environment, we live in a place that we can do whatever the heck we want anytime we want. We don't care if the price goes up by 30%. I'm happy to go down to Whole Foods and feel good to plop down an extra 50% to buy an organic banana. Someone who only makes $8,000 a year cares very deeply about that cost delta. They need to see the cost of food go down, the cost of energy go down, the cost of medicine go down. The improvement that's driven by technology and has been for 10,000 years, mostly accrues to the poorest people in society first. That's the problem. And so we all who are in charge, those of us who are rich, who are elite, who have power, who have control, who have influence who run the fucking government, we all get to raise our hand and say, I don't want to take any more risk because one person died. Meanwhile, a million people are starving to death over the next three months. And you can make that same story. You can connect those dots in every area of technology that humans have lost their risk tolerance for in the wealthy industrialized West. And we are largely I think, not just it hurting ourselves because of the economic costs and all the other stuff that's going on that we're now seeing is very apparent. But we're also limiting the intelligence and the energy to make technology and progress it that could benefit the whole world. We're limiting its ability to diffuse. And I think it's it's really profoundly sad. And I hope that we one day look
SPEAKER_02: back at this era as almost like a pseudo Dark Ages, and we wake up someday and recognize that we need to take some degree of reason. All right, listen, whatever. It's a family. Yeah. So I got a little passionate about the whole anti tech stuff. Hey, we like it. We like it. And listen, 35 people died building
SPEAKER_04: the Golden Gate Bridge, right? Like the people wanted to see that progress. People took risk. That's it. No risk, no reward. To that point, I think it took two years to create the Bay
SPEAKER_05: Bridge and 17 years to do the repair to it. I mean, that's how crazy things have gotten. $2 billion to $2 billion to build those suicide nets on the
SPEAKER_02: side of the Golden Gate Bridge and some fraction of that to build the whole friggin bridge. And even on a dollar adjusted basis. It's ridiculous. It was five. It's interesting. You said
SPEAKER_04: that 550 million to build the bridge in US dollars. And then yeah, it was the same amount to build the nets. So can I ask a question about the cruise thing? So do you believe
SPEAKER_05: that cruise will have a good solution to self driving? I'm just like a little bit skeptical. Are they owned by GM now?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. But didn't they raise money from Softbank? Isn't there some like independent funding as well that happened?
SPEAKER_05: I thought it was sold to GM. I'm just like, what's part of it was sold to GM. And then they set it up as
SPEAKER_02: a sub and they like like alphabet did with Waymo alphabets raised 5 billion in outside money in the Waymo. And I think that Cruz or GM tried to do the same thing where they've got Softbank and a bunch of institutional investors in Cruz. But majority. Right. Yeah, it was spun out because GM didn't
SPEAKER_04: have the ability to bankroll it. It's obvious that these are getting there. The question is, is I think it's more like 10 years before this is fully deployed. Also, you have to build all the cars. If Elon does get out this robo taxi vehicle for 25k, which he seems like is well on the way with the model three to getting to this was an early mock up from Walter Isaacson's book, which looks pretty sharp, and it doesn't have it's like a
SPEAKER_04: two seat car. So these things zipping around San Francisco, etc, at a reasonable speed 2535 miles an hour. I think he's pretty close to having this I use the self driving beta, full self driving FSB I use it all the time. I used to only use it on highways. Now I use it on side roads. I disengage it when it's on roads that are not clearly marked. You know, have you guys taken a cruise or Waymo road? I haven't taken either. I
SPEAKER_04: got invited to the beta though for cruise you guys want to check on?
SPEAKER_05: Personally, I would not trust the cruise ride. I don't believe they're responsible for this accident as it turns out, but I'm just skeptical that some of these initiatives are going to pan out. I think why are you skeptical? Yeah, I think it's a
SPEAKER_05: hard problem to solve. And I'm just dubious about GM's ability to develop tech at this level of sophistication. Tesla will get
SPEAKER_02: there. I think Tesla is already there. Well, if an autonomous
SPEAKER_02: Tesla drove up and pick you up, would you do that? Would you take a ride in that? I mean, not today. But I mean, when they get
SPEAKER_05: there, which I don't think will be 10 years. I mean, it seems like Tesla's this way ahead of everybody else.
SPEAKER_02: Chamath, what do you think? Where do you think the tech is?
SPEAKER_03: I think this is a an inference problem for Tesla. And it's a learning problem for everybody else. So I think in order to build level five autonomy, you have to have good reasoning. And I think in order to have good reasoning, you just need to have enough training data where you literally see every potential branch and node in a decision tree. And so it's one thing to be able to scan a light, know that it's green and then go forward. But when you multiply that by every intersection, every light in every city, it's a massive, massive learning problem. So the thing that GM and Cruz don't have, in my opinion, is a path to acquire enough data to be credible. Could they solve a limited set of streets in San Francisco? Yeah. Yes. And so if you have the city, sort of block off certain parts of the neighborhoods and say, no more human driven vehicles in these sections, only these three or four licensed providers can be inside of it. I think that Cruz and Waymo could work. But if you're going to live in a world where there's autonomy, meaning like humans can drive wherever they want, I think Tesla is the only one because I think they've acquired and they are acquiring so much training data that for them, they're fine tuning reasoning. And it's exactly what Jason just described. Jason is a perfect example of a consumer now, who has adopted it, call it 70% of his use cases, and it's incrementally kind of like getting towards 90% or 95%. And I think that that's impressive. I would agree with Jason, I use FSD 100% on the highways. And depending on where I'm going, so like this weekend, when I when I came to David, your house, Sax's house, full FSD the whole way. Yeah. 201 it's
SPEAKER_04: bulletproof, bulletproof in the city. Yeah. And navigating to
SPEAKER_03: get into into David's house. I thought it was it was pitch perfect. And there was one or twice where I'm actually the person that's panicking and disengaging. Yes, like intersections, right? left turns. And also just on the highway, like I get a little skittish at times if it goes if it speeds up or whatever. My point is, Tesla is so close to
SPEAKER_03: it. So I do trust that they'll have a credible solution in the next four or five years. And these other companies, I think that they need to have a solution for training and I don't see it. Yeah, the point is, there's over a million cars
SPEAKER_04: recording because when you buy a Tesla, you turn on self driving, it's in every car. And so every car is recording data all the time, as opposed to GM, GM doesn't take the time to put the $10,000 20,000 package half a million new sensor collecting
SPEAKER_03: millions of miles a quarter, a quarter being added to the network. Exactly what Tesla did years and years ago is even
SPEAKER_05: before self driving was a thing. They put all the cameras in the cars to collect the data. And you're right, GM doesn't do that. If GM did that to their legacy gas cars, and then
SPEAKER_03: funneled that into cruise, I think they would have a decent shot, but they are not doing that. Here's a map of Waymo in
SPEAKER_04: and I brought this up because you know, I think there's two different strategies going on here. Tesla's going for the whole Megillah, they want to be able to do dirt roads you've never been on Waymo and crews are working from constrained areas that they can perfect. And Phoenix is the perfect area because that's a grid based system, very wide highways, and it was planned. And so if you have a planned community, you know, it's not like a city in Italy or France, where it's like the roads have been there for 800 years. When you have some modern city where it's a grid based system, Austin falls into this as well for a large portion of Austin, it's going to be fairly easy to do those. And so that's what we'll see. My prediction is we'll see this. Also, it's very flat, obviously no hills and also weather. So you know, the northeast will be the last place when you go to Boston or, you know, you're in other places that don't have a grid based system and you have ice and snow. This stuff is 10 plus years out but in a dry place with consistent weather like California, Phoenix, etc. It's it's it's it's now right it's now I think okay in Bill Gurley's regulatory capture corner. We have an interesting
SPEAKER_04: story about JSX if you don't know jet suite x that's what the JSX stands for. This is an airline that offers hop on public charter flights out of FBOs tiny airports usually reserved for private jets and they give passengers the private jet experience for the cost of roughly a first class ticket at major airlines maybe double the cost of coach ticket 700 bucks one way from Westchester to Miami 14 hundred dollars roundtrip not a bad deal. By comparison united on the same day are between five and 800 first class from Newark to Miami. Jet suite x has 47 airplanes with 1200 crew members. Let me cut in and give you my anecdote on Saturday, I
SPEAKER_02: took a JSX flight from Vegas to Oakland. What were you doing in Vegas? I went to the opening night of the YouTube concert at the sphere opening night at the sphere. Incredible. Yeah, the sphere I looked at the photos and the videos. I wasn't super
SPEAKER_04: impressed. Is it impressive in person because it didn't come across in the videos. Yeah, it's incredible. You got to go see
SPEAKER_02: it. I think it's incredible how so it's the first like live experience that I think you have kind of live analog elements like a band and this incredibly immersive digital experience because it's a 360 foot tall dome. And the entirety of the interior of the dome is a digital screen. So there were these scenescapes that they created that were like dynamic video on these walls. That it's hard. I don't think the videos do it justice. Like when you're actually when you're in this room during this shot right here and I was kind of sitting center I was also I went down on the floor looks like you're in the desert or something. It's like you're there. Dude. I mean, it's it's inexplicable. It's more real than VR. It's like you're in this world. And they even did these amazing integrated scenes where they had like helicopters flying overhead. And then they had spotlights coming out of the ceiling while the helicopters were flying in the video above you. They did like a hot air balloon flying above you and they drop like a rope down. So it was this total integration of like physical and virtual content. And I think like you to to be honest, as great as the concert was is almost like the most boring thing you could probably do with that setup. Over time, you could probably integrate a lot more things you could have giant sets and giant scenes and people you know, doing stuff physically Star Wars movie Star Wars in real life, you could have like the
SPEAKER_04:
SPEAKER_02: siege of Carthage and you can have ships on the ground and then you could see the battle scene behind you and you'd be like in the middle of it. The whole thing was really incredible. I heard about the sound. Hundreds of speakers. So
SPEAKER_02: when I was down on the floor, I went right by the stage on the floor. The some of the sound is actually distorted down there and it's not that good. When you're in the seats that setback where the sound is really designed hundreds of speakers like built into the wall hurt each seat. There's there's seat speakers, but really comes from the dome. And the dome sound when you're sitting in the seats is really like immersive and incredible. So you took JetX back and then I took JetX. By the way, I will my prediction on the sphere. I think there'll be like dozens of these things soon enough. Okay, because this can become like a new form of live entertainment venue. It's not just a stage where someone stands on music. It's a new model and more than musical artists. I think you'll see like new kinds of art and new kinds of things happening on these in these things. Anyway, there's also video on the outside. So
SPEAKER_04: you can do advertisements or make it look like a pumpkin or make it look like a basketball. I saw that and it'll get cheaper
SPEAKER_02: and cheaper over time. The first one was what to two, two and a half billion dollars. They'll make smaller versions of it. It'll be a couple hundred million. It's almost like I'm ex theater. So roll them out all over. So back to JetX, we'd x 240 bucks, you drive up just like an FBO, like a private terminal, drive up, walk in no security, no lines, no check in, get on, get off. It's like flying. Some check in so they
SPEAKER_04: know your name and stuff. And then you walk up and they give
SPEAKER_02: them the ticket. And then they do a gate side check in, they take your bag and they put it all under the plane, save an
SPEAKER_04: hour on either a half hour. Oh my god, dude, it's so free. It's
SPEAKER_02: ridiculous. And like when my mom comes to visit, she takes it. She loves it. But obviously, there's got to be some catch. I don't really know these rags, but there's some cash. I'll explain that now. So they have 47 airplanes 1200 crew members,
SPEAKER_04: American and Southwest and several major aviation unions are choosing JSX of exploiting a regulatory loophole that they can hire pilots who are too old to fly for commercial airlines and who don't have the requisite 15 hour 1500 hours of flying experience because they are a smaller airline. JetSuiteX says its captains average over 8000 flying hours and first office average over 3000 flying hours so they're blowing past the regulation so that's obviously a red herring according to JetSuiteX two huge US airlines and their labor unions want companies like JetSuiteX small air carriers that actually care about providing you with much needed choice and high quality service to be legislated out of existence. And by the way, JetSuiteX has a couple of the other airlines I think United has an investor so the other airlines actually want this there obviously is a difference in security. But one difference is not how many hours the pilots have obviously, it's going through TSA. So the ability to not go through TSA is such a key part of this experience and to not go through a big terminal JetBlue and United support JSX and I think they're exploring doing this themselves. So regulatory capture had its best,
SPEAKER_03: I guess I'll take the unpopular side of this. I think it's easy to blame this regulatory capture boogeyman here. Okay, I think JetSuiteX seems like an amazing service. It has Starlink a bunch of my friends have taken it. They seem to enjoy it a lot. But here is the the clever arbitrage that JetSuiteX is taking, which is that they fly under what's called part 135 of the FAA. And that is when you take a private plane and you charter it. The airlines fly under what's called part 121. And the rules are very different if you're 121 versus part 135. And the biggest rule is the training of the pilots, which is that there are minimum hour requirements to be a commercial airline pilot, which is about 1500 hours versus 250 hours for a part 135 charter pilot. So I think the question is, is that it's one thing where you charter a plane with two or three of your friends. That's a part 135 license in a small plane. But when you take a large plane with nobody else you don't know, I think there's a pretty credible argument that that's a commercial airline. And I do think that it's reasonable that if you're running a commercial airline through a loophole, at some point, if you get big enough, that loophole is going to be obvious, obvious enough that people will ask it to be closed. I think what you want to have is this loophole closed. Or you decide that part 135 where there are so many people, the pilots should be at a certain flight training standard.
SPEAKER_04: And to JetSuiteX's defense, they reported their captain's average over 8000 flying hours. So that is a magnitude more 5x more than five times the rules and first office average over 3000. So why not just up that number of hours to 500 or 1000? Yeah, or just make it make everybody 15. Or Jason, to your point, just like say, go to the FAA and say,
SPEAKER_03: look, we're going to continue to fly part 135. But here are the exact we promised to never hire a pilot that is not under this 1500 hour threshold, etc, etc. There's all kinds of ways to go around it. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that they're basically running a United. Yeah, they're pretending that it's a private plane. And I think that there are some. Yeah, it's a mini United. Yeah, it's somewhere between the two.
SPEAKER_04: No, because United runs those regional legs as well. Yes, in
SPEAKER_03: an equivalent size planes. So I do think it should exist. I just think that it should exist on a relatively level playing field. I don't want somebody else to use a loophole. So I would not want them to use a loophole either. Part 135 exists. I'm actually in agreement to take a private plane and charter it not to run an airline. All right, everybody. This has been another amazing episode of
SPEAKER_04: the all in podcast. Thank you to from his sphere of influence David Freberg, the Sultan of Science, and the rain man himself. Hot water burn baby. David Sachs and the dictator himself. Shemagh Palihampatina. Love you boys. I am the world's greatest moderator and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge door because they're all just like this like sexual tension that they just need to release. What you're the bee? What you're a bee? We need to get merch.
